I think of Fieldnotes/MSH as an
imprint rather than a press, and myself as an amateur (in the root sense of
that word) working on the margins of the small press world. Under this imprint
I publish (erratically) occasional broadsides and chapbooks. The broadsides (so
far) are my own poems and I circulate them to friends and colleagues to
celebrate National Poetry Month. The chapbooks are prose, texts I’ve come
across one way or another that I feel deserve an audience. Fieldnotes operates
pretty much within the gift economy—chapbook authors get 10% of the print run.
I try to recoup design and printing costs. If I do better than that the money
goes towards the next publication.
Canadian
poet and essayist Maureen Scott Harris was born in Prince Rupert (BC), grew up
in Winnipeg (MB) and lives in Toronto (ON). She has published three collections
of poetry: A Possible Landscape
(Brick Books, 1993), Drowning Lessons
(Pedlar Press, 2004) awarded the 2005 Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and Slow Curve Out (Pedlar Press, 2012),
shortlisted for the League of Canadian Poets’ Pat Lowther Award. Harris’s
essays have won the Prairie Fire Creative
Nonfiction Prize, and the WildCare Tasmania Nature Writing Prize, which
included a residency in Tasmania at Lake St. Clair. In 2012-2013 she was
Artist-in-Residence at the Koffler Scientific Reserve at Jokers Hill, north of
Toronto. With other poets and environmentalists she is currently plotting
poetry walks that follow the (sometimes buried) rivers and streams of Toronto.
Fieldnotes/MSH is her own enterprise.
1 – When did Fieldnotes/MSH first
start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since you started,
if at all? And what have you learned through the process?
Fieldnotes began in January 2002 when
I decided I wanted to publish a broadside of my poem “The Drowned Boy.” For
some time I’d wanted to do something to mark National Poetry Month. I bought a
big rubber stamp that says ‘National Poetry Month,’ stamped envelopes with it, and
sent the broadside out to friends and colleagues. My initial intention was to
publish a broadside every year for poetry month, but I only managed to keep it going
for another year.
Then in 2010 I heard Pedlar Press
publisher Beth Follett speak in the Hart House Library (University of Toronto)
about the future of the printed book and its readers. Beth is always eloquent.
The audience was excited and inspired by what she had to say, but it wasn’t
large. It seemed to me—and several others—that her talk should be published. I
thought about it for a few days, and decided I could publish it as a Fieldnotes
Chapbook.
I had no immediate intention of
publishing anything more. But when Beth’s YesNo
appeared and was launched people began to ask me what I’d publish next. I
didn’t want to invest a lot of time in publishing and I don’t have a lot of
money for it either, but I decided I would consider occasional publications, guided
by my own responses to what I happened upon. I’m interested in talks and
lectures, things that might disappear beyond their occasion. I’m also mainly
interested in prose.
That said, the second Fieldnotes
Chapbook was in fact a collection of poems written in response to a sculpture exhibition by Susan Low-Beer. It appeared in 2013. Fieldnotes came into that late in the game. With
several other poets I’d been invited to view a series of Low-Beer’s sculptured
heads and write something in response to them. The poems were assembled,
edited, and the book designed when the group went looking for an ISBN. I was
asked if it could appear as a Fieldnotes chapbook and said yes.
Late in 2014 I read an unpublished
essay by Kelley Aitken about the Penone sculpture that once graced the Galeria
Italia at the AGO. I’ve mourned that work’s disappearance, so I decided to
publish the essay. It launched in January 2015. I’m now working on the next
chapbook, Stan Dragland’s Page Lecture (delivered at Queen’s University about a
year ago) on the poetry and prose of Joanne Page.
Last April I revived my poetry month
broadside and I expect to publish another one in 2016. I’ve learned that it
takes time and energy to publish, but it’s also satisfying. I expect Fieldnotes
will publish erratically in the future as it has in the past. And it will
continue, if it does, as I come across material that I think deserves an
audience.
2 – What first brought you to
publishing?
I’ve been interested in small press
publishing since the late 1960s when I was in what we then called library school.
My favourite course, taught by Douglas Lochhead, was the history of books and printing.
During it we pulled some prints on the Massey College presses. I also did a
project on little magazines and literary ephemera for my humanities materials
course. From a library standpoint such publications are hard to learn about and
to collect; there was a growing interest in them that paralleled the growing
interest in Canadian writing.
Much later, and for about 10 years, I
worked at Robarts Library as the CIP librarian, doing the catalogue copy for
forthcoming books; through that job I met many people in publishing. Then I
worked for Brick Books as production manager for several years. Working for
them I learned how small publishing unfolds and, given computers, it seemed
pretty easy to make a broadside.
3 – What do you consider the role and
responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?
I think each small press must
determine its own role and responsibilities. That said, I think the
responsibilities fall in two directions: to the writer and to the reader. I
want to produce chapbooks that embody or hold their texts appropriately and as
beautifully as possible, in tribute to the work that goes into writing them—and
I also want to extend the life of what might otherwise not be seen or heard.
4 – What do you see your press doing
that no one else is?
Hmmm—perhaps rejoicing solely in the serendipitous.
5 – What do you see as the most
effective way to get new chapbooks out into the world?
In my experience the launch of a
chapbook is the most effective form of distribution. I believe attendance at
small press fairs is also good, but as an introvert I find an afternoon of
crowds completely exhausting and so don’t participate regularly. Word of mouth.
I don’t use social media because I don’t know how to use it effectively, and I
don’t want to spend time on it.
6 – How involved an editor are you?
Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?
It depends on how much editing the
work requires. I’ve done both light and more involved editing.
7 – How do your books get
distributed? What are your usual print runs?
Mostly by the launch, some by mail.
My chapbook print runs have been 100 copies—though the Page Lecture will be
200.
8 – How many other people are
involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so,
how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?
So far I’ve worked directly only with
authors and designers. I do the editing and copy-editing myself, though I
sometimes consult with friends who have those skills. And of course I work with
the printer.
9 – How has being an editor/publisher
changed the way you think about your own writing?
It’s shown me that I don’t
necessarily have to wait on anyone else to publish something that I want to see
published.
10– How do you approach the idea of
publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran
Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had titles
during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and
bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the
whole question as irrelevant?
Fieldnotes began as a vehicle to publish
my own poems—though the poems I used for them had already appeared in journals.
So I’m clearly not opposed to self-publishing. That said, I would in general
prefer not to publish a chapbook of my own work, unless it was work that had
been published elsewhere and so had the benefit of editing.
11– How do you see Fieldnotes
evolving?
I don’t see it evolving beyond what
it is.
12– What, as a publisher, are you
most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about
your publications? What is your biggest frustration?
I’m proud to have brought into a
larger public arena some writing and thinking that might have stayed ephemeral
or in the manuscript drawer. As for
frustrations—distribution is the historical issue for Canadian publishing. If
there were more hours in the day and I were more social I might figure out a
way to do this better.
13– Who were your early publishing
models when starting out?
Brick Books, with its attention to both
editing and authors, offers a wonderful model for publishing, as does Pedlar
Press.
14– How does Fieldnotes work to
engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What
journals or presses do you see Fieldnotes in dialogue with? How important do
you see those dialogues, those conversations?
Fieldnotes is really a peripheral
enterprise, not particularly in dialogue with anyone. Though I do like to talk
to, for example, Carleton Wilson and Nicholas Power about the small press
world.
15– Do you hold regular or occasional
readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other
events?
I hold a launch for each chapbook, at
which I invite the author to read or to speak about the project.
16– How do you utilize the internet,
if at all, to further your goals?
I haven’t utilized it. At best I
might post a note on my Facebook page.
17– Do you take submissions? If so,
what aren’t you looking for?
No.
18– Tell me about three of your most
recent titles, and why they’re special.
Fieldnotes has only published 4
chapbooks, and of those, only 3 are ones I can claim. I’ve already described
them above in my answer to the first question. But I’ll say something about the
broadsides. I met Alan Siu of Sunville Printco Inc when I was working for Brick Books; he prints, and has designed, for them. Alan has done all my broadsides,
and is currently designing the Page Lecture—he’s generous and a delight to work
with.
